Tuesday, June 24, 2008

The B-I-B-L-E

Many years ago when Teen Angel was on a traveling cheerleading squad (and let us please stop here to thank the good Lord that we’re not doing THAT anymore. Don’t get me started. That’s a whole other post.), we went to a competition in Chicago. As her squad, a pee wee group of rambunctious little girls, was about to take the floor, I overheard one of the workers say, “God bless those who work with youth.” He really meant it. His voice came drifting back to me last night while I was helping with bible school. Near the end of the evening as my energy flagged and I stumbled through another round of the hand jive, I looked into the exhausted faces of fellow adults who had wrangled kids for nearly three hours and thought to myself, “God bless ‘em.” And my next thought was, “Holy crap. We have four more nights of this.”

Bible school is great fun. I love working with the kids and trying to give them the same experience I had when I was a kid, but it’s like childbirth. Your mind has a way of blocking out how much work and energy it takes to pull it off until you get into the middle of it. I guess that selective memory loss is the Lord’s way of making sure we have enough volunteers for next year. Our church holds bible school at night, so you’d think the kids would be kind of tuckered out from a full day of activities before they arrive at the church. Not so, Kemo Sabe. They are rarin’ to go. The adults? Not so much. I’d give my right arm to have the energy these kids have at six o’clock in the evening. Our largest class this year is preschoolers, and there is only one girl in that class. It is one wiggling, squirming batch of boys, and they are so stinkin’ cute you almost can’t look at them. And boy, do they all make me laugh. There was the little boy who belly laughs at everything. The little girl who was so into our alien theme that she tried to convince us she had stepped on a space rock and could hardly walk. And a little boy whose pants kept falling down around his ankles. He wasn’t concerned about pulling them up. Every time we turned around someone was shouting, “Pants down!” We finally constructed a Jethro Bodine belt out of some twine we pulled from the decorating supplies and prayed he wouldn’t need to pee (or worse) before he went home. There were lots of smiling faces with milk and Kool-aid mustaches and sticky fingers from munching on asteroids (round Rice Krispie treats made with Fruity Pebbles). The space station lift-off (fog machine) was a big hit. We had only one injury accident that resulted in a bloody nose, and one non injury accident if you count Sissy’s butt in the air tumble over a traffic cone during space station tag. We’re off to a good start, and there’s more fun and frivolity planned for the rest of the week….if the adults can hold out. God bless the people who work with youth. They’re gonna need it.